It makes sense to me that there wasn’t enough evidence to put him on the no fly list. That should be a high barrier. I wonder if there was enough there to advise that he should have extra attention paid to him. I also wonder if those are just used for flights originating in the US since they require more coordination than just denying a permission to fly to the US.

That said, there is still a false positive problem there, but it could still reasonably have a lower standard of proof that may sometimes be reached by hearsay, assuming there’s an adequate appeals process

I’m not convinced this is a real tradeoff. It’s perfectly possible that we’re simultaneously putting some people on the list for hysterical/paranoid reasons and failing to put other people on the list who should have been there. That is, indeed, exactly what the CBS piece plausibly claimed.

I guess there’s a tradeoff between accountability and the comfort of those who craft and implement our policies, though. But at this late date, the president has been very clear where he stands on that particular tradeoff.

Show me any memo which statistically correlates increasing amounts of paper chasing chimeras with productive output.
If you want a ‘Watch List’ to work…it has to be a manageable size. Children with the same name as someone suspected of not using Polident being a problem is what you get when you institutionalize idiocy.

Everyone should familiarize themselves with the trade-off, but even if they do we still have the problem that it’s not the same people who now advocate for increased sensitivity (or better profiling, or whatever) that will later decry baseless inquiries as harassment. Rather, each of those are self-consciously antagonistic groups (ie NRO bloggers and ACLU consultants) who will never agree. I wish our polity was made up predominantly of people like Attackerman seeking the right balance between these ends (privacy and prudence as i heard it put today) in all open frankness. Unfortunately, whether out of real self-styled ideological purity or tactical positioning, the discussion is dominated by mutually-opposed sides that frame the questions not in terms of balance but in whatever terms maximally enhance the hearing that their view of the policy will receive from the uncommitted.

On 9/11, it was alleged that there were terrorists flying planes, though the official passenger manifest of each plane fails to include the names of any of the alleged hijackers.

In the Richard Reid case, a willing dupe was provided an alleged “shoe bomb” which, while indeed a shoe, was not in fact a very good bomb. Again, in the most recent case, a willing dupe was provided with an alleged bomb, which was not in fact a bomb. Richard Reid had a shoe and this guy apparently had some gun powder. Neither had a bomb.

The best way to gain total control over a society is to frighten them to the extent that they actually demand to be protected from alleged threats. The operatives who used these willing stooges for this purpose work for an organization that serves the global agenda. They knew damn well that neither device was in fact capable of bringing down an aircraft as configured. They also knew that the mere apparent attempt to light anything on an airplane would serve the same purpose as actually blowing one up.

Richard Reid ensured that we would all be taking off our shoes to board airplanes, and now with this most recent act, some company is about to sell a shitload of full body scanning devices, and we will all be subject to full body pat-downs. Do you see the incremental nature of the fascist agenda at work? Do you understand what is really going on? There is no “Al Qaeda.” Remember when the “Al Qaeda In Iraq” brand was launched into the media like so much soap? Are you kidding me? There is no “Osama Bin Laden.” You have no evidence of the existence of the man or his alleged organization.

Arguing the liberal side of a false premise serves the globalist’s agenda.

Remember the alleged London “Terror In The Skies” incident? In that case, there was no incident at all. The alleged terrorists had no passports and no airline tickets, yet the banner headline, timed just one day after Lieberman’s loss to Lamont, screamed: “Terror In The Skies!”

In that instance the actual terrorist act was the banner headline itself. Frightening an entire population for political purposes and subsequent control through fear is itself, terrorism, under every definition.

Bush, Rove and Mel Sembler went on to help raise funds for Lieberman, and the rest is self-evident.

Do the math.

The rest of the world knows the entire truth…as per these headlines:

CIA admits tracking ‘The Nigerian’ before NorthWest terror attack

Top US security official says there’s no indication an accused Nigerian terrorist was acting for Al Qaeda.

An intelligence official said that the son’s name, passport number and possible connection to extremists were indeed disseminated. “I’m not aware of a magic piece of intelligence somehow withheld that would have put AbdulMutallab on the no-fly list,” the official said.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said department staff did what they were supposed to have done by sending a cable to the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington about the matter. Kelly said any decision to have revoked the suspect’s visa would have been an interagency decision.

So – to be clear…

The CIA received not one, but two visits by the suspects father, more than five weeks prior to the alleged bombing attempt.

The CIA had the information – all of it – at Langley. Also, the National Counterterorism Center had the information.

When are we all going to awaken to the fact that “incompetence” is NEVER the actual reason why these incidents are allowed to occur?

The shadow government at the CIA (GHW Bush Division) is in fact the world’s largest terrorist organization.

What the kid’s father had no way of knowing, was that it was the CIA itself who had recruited his son and prepared him for the failed bombing attempt. The father goes to the Embassy and meets with a spook who already knows that the CIA has targeted his son as a tool. They dutifully take down all the information, as if learning of it for the first time, and insist that the father not speak to anyone else about this. The CIA laughs, and proceeds with its alleged Al Qaeda operation. Does it get any more obvious? The CIA is Al Qaeda. When Richard Clark told Bush that “Al Qaeda did this” – referring to the attacks of 9/11, that is exactly what he meant. Bush ordered Able Danger shut down in advance of 9/11 and approved unlimited warrantless wiretapping prior to 9/11 not to prevent the attack – but to enable the attack.

It’s time to think like a criminal. Only when you view these circumstances without any moral compass, do they begin to make sense.

WASHINGTON, Dec 28 (IPS) – U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a “neutron initiator” for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official.

Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told IPS that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the fabrication, however.

The Times of London story published Dec. 14 did not identify the source of the document. But it quoted “an Asian intelligence source” – a term some news media have used for Israeli intelligence officials – as confirming that his government believes Iran was working on a neutron initiator as recently as 2007.

The story of the purported Iranian document prompted a new round of expressions of U.S. and European support for tougher sanctions against Iran and reminders of Israel’s threats to attack Iranian nuclear programme targets if diplomacy fails.

U.S. news media reporting has left the impression that U.S. intelligence analysts have not made up their mind about the document’s authenticity, although it has been widely reported that they have now had a full year to assess the issue.

Giraldi’s intelligence sources did not reveal all the reasons that led analysts to conclude that the purported Iran document had been fabricated by a foreign intelligence agency. But their suspicions of fraud were prompted in part by the source of the story, according to Giraldi.

“The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British government,” Giraldi said.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49833

Spencer you explained the “systemic failure” on Democracy Now really well. Thanks.

Is there any space between the two list that you described. That someone who is suspect but not yet on the “no fly” list has to step into another line or room to be more fully inspected?

Yeah, that’s called the Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB. FBI’s in charge of it.